Propagation aspects of a wireless capsule endoscopy link

Propagation for a wireless in-to-out-body endoscopy link is investigated. A hospital scenario is considered where endoscopy images taken inside the body are wirelessly transmitted to a monitoring device located in the vicinity of the patient. Propagation characteristics of the hospital scenario are determined empirically through measurements of averaged power delay profiles. We distinguish between a direct in-to-out-body link and a dual-hop relay link where the image data is first sent to an on-body hub device. Path loss for the direct link is found to be fairly high to allow for reliable communication. It is argued that the dual-hop relay link is a better option because it offers options to alleviate the path loss issue, such as amplification or retransmission of the image data.